Article

A Free AFib Appointment Prep Sheet (No App Required)

Published 5 August 2026 · 5 minute read · by Bryan, developer of My AFib Companion

You know the moment. You’re in the parking lot afterwards, and the question arrives.

Cardiology appointments are short, and a good part of one goes on answering precise questions from memory. How often. How long. Did anything change. You guess, because you’re being asked about three months of your life out loud, without notes, in a room where you’re nervous. Then you drive home and remember what you actually wanted to ask.

If the diagnosis is recent, the appointment itself is probably something you’ve been turning over for weeks. That part is normal and I’m not going to dwell on it.

The fix is a piece of paper.

Below is the whole thing — five short sections plus a packing list. Copy it onto a sheet by hand, fill it in the night before, and read from it. No signup, no email address, nothing to install. If you’d rather print it, this page is set up to print cleanly: use your browser’s Print command (⌘P on a Mac, Ctrl+P on Windows).

What to put in your bag

• The sheet, filled in — and a spare copy if you can
• A pen
• Your actual medication bottles, or a photo of each label
• Any discharge papers or test results you were given and never showed anyone
• Your insurance card and ID
• The names of your other doctors
• A person, if one is available

The sheet

1. Since my last visit

Best guesses are fine — write them as guesses. “About six, maybe more” is more useful than a confident number you settled on in the waiting room. If you keep a log, bring the count, not the log.

2. What changed

3. Medications — as they actually went

One line per medicine:

Write the missed doses down. No apology, no explanation — just the number.

This is the section people quietly round up, and it’s the one where a flattering answer is worth the least to everybody in the room. Nobody is grading you. A real sentence like “I miss the evening one maybe twice a week” is worth more than a tidy one that isn’t true.

4. My three questions

Three, written before you go, in your own handwriting. Not ten. Ten means the last seven get rushed, and the two that mattered were third and ninth.

If you’re stuck, these are worth stealing:

• “How long is too long before I should call you?” Write the answer at the top of wherever you keep your records.
• “What would you want to know about between now and my next visit?” That one turns anxious record-keeping into a task with a finish line.
• “What format do you want this in?” Paper, a PDF, the patient portal, or nothing at all. Practices differ, almost nobody asks, and the answer saves you a year of guessing.
• “What would make you change what I’m taking?” Not a request to change anything — a question about what they’re watching for.

5. Blank space

Leave the bottom third of the page empty.

You will be told something you didn’t expect, and you will not remember it in the car. Write it down while they’re saying it. Asking someone to repeat a word so you can spell it is not rude.

How to use it

Fill it in the night before, not that morning. Rushed is how the third question goes missing.

Hand over one page. A single sheet gets read in the room. Forty pages get “leave it at the desk.” Offer the detail if they ask for it — usually they’ll want the summary and two follow-up questions.

Bring someone if you can. Two people hear more than one, and the second person is usually the one who remembers what was said.

Keep the used ones. Six of these in a folder is a history. It’s the closest thing to a record of your own case that exists outside a hospital’s computer.

Take it — it’s yours

Copy it, print it, change it, pin it to a noticeboard, hand a stack to a nurse. No credit needed, no email address, no link back. September is AFib Awareness Month, which is as good a reason as any to put a free thing on the internet.

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I build an iPhone app, My AFib Companion, that keeps this kind of record for you and turns it into a PDF — it’s $9.99/month or $59.99/year after a 30-day trial, with no free tier. The paper version above is free and it works, so start there.

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